Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics » (Reprint)

David Dodd is founder of The Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics website and coeditor of The Grateful Dead Reader and The Grateful Dead and the Deadheads: An Annotated Bibliography. He is the city librarian of San Rafael, California.

When the Grateful Dead's in-house publishing company, Ice Nine, decided that the band's fortieth anniversary was a good time to publish their entire lyric catalog, a wave of excitement swept across the world of Deadheads, or would have had they known. What was that unclear word in "Uncle John's Band"? Would "Revolutionary Hamstrung Blues" be included? Which Cassidy is John Barlow writing about? Would Robert Hunter reveal the meaning of anything at all? These questions are finally answered with the publication of this book, but in true Grateful Dead fashion you'll have to dig around to find the answers and have fun doing it.

The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics is an authoritative text, providing standard versions of all the original songs so that you can win an occasional bar bet. Or not. There are songs you've never heard and others you've never heard right and still others you didn't know existed, and some, indeed, that may not exist at all. To provide a context for this formidable body of work, of which his part is primary, Robert Hunter has written a foreword that goes to the heart of the matter.

These are some of the best-loved songs in the modern American songbook. You will hear them hummed and spoken among tens of thousands as counterculture code and recorded by musicians of all stripes for their inimitable singability, mysterious presence, and obscure accessibility. How do they do all this? The annotations on sources provide a gloss on the lyrics, which goes to the roots of Western culture as they are incorporated into them. Be it fairy tale or folksong that the lyricists have drawn on, ancient verse, biblical narrative, or T. S. Eliot, the references arehere. This has never been done before. There are things here that would not have otherwise been known or imagined, which also goes for what was in the minds of the lyricists themselves. They would be the first to admit that the incursion of imagery into their creative memory banks was a chancy business.

Annotation is a venerable literary tradition. It's been done for the works of Dante and Shakespeare, and for Finnegans Wake annotations may be essential. Mother Goose and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland have been annotated. All genres of writing can be illuminated by it, and that fundamental revelation that comes from reading books — "Oh, I always wondered about that" — becomes especially meaningful. David Dodd is well suited to the task of annotation. An avid Grateful Dead concertgoer for two decades, he is a librarian who brings to the work a detective's love of following a clue as far as it will take him. He first began the annotation as a research project in 1995, in the early days of the Web, through the medium of a website. As in all things virtual, it grew, and with input from interested correspondents from around the world, the website evolved continually. With their publication in book form, the Grateful Dead's lyrics can be newly savored, couched in the cultural traditions that spawned them.

With the addition of artist Jim Carpenter's illustrations, whimsical elements in the lyrics, aspects cognitively unreferenceable, and imagery often repeated are brought to light. What he has seen to illustrate itself illustrates the American legend that is present in The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics. You won't think of the cultural icon that is the Grateful Dead the same way again.

Publishers Weekly

Even the most hardcore Deadheads will be impressed by this obsessively complete look at the Grateful Dead's lyrics written by Robert Hunter and John Barlow, as well as selected traditional and cover songs that were basic parts of the Dead's repertoire. In 1994, Dodd (The Grateful Dead Reader) founded the first Web site of annotated Dead lyrics, and this book is the product of that project, which united academics and fans in finding "new references, resonances, and refractions" in favorites like "Dark Star" and "Uncle John's Band." The annotations range from a look at the influence of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," Stephen Foster's "Oh Susanna," and Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde on Hunter's "New Speedway Boogie" to a recipe for cream puffs by Denver Post food critic John Kessler to illustrate "Cream Puff War," an obscure tune by Jerry Garcia. But the heart of the book is Hunter's exquisitely written foreword, which is equal parts love letter to the lyric tradition, impassioned argument on the importance of songwriting and creativity, and reverie for the Grateful Dead themselves and his luck in being their primary lyricist: "I lived lyric year in and year out for decades and never lost my taste for it." Illus., photos. (Oct. 27) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Foreword by Robert Hunter

Preface by Alan Trist

Introduction by David Dodd

The Lyrics 1965-1995

(Songs are listed by date of first performance or, if never in the live repertoire, by date of studio recording, whichever comes first. An alphabetical list of songs is included in the index.)

1965

Can't Come Down

Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)

Mindbender

The Only Time Is Now

1966

Cold Rain and Snow

I Know You Rider

You See a Broken Heart

Beat It on Down the Line

You Don't Have to Ask

Cream Puff War

Tastebud

New, New Minglewood Blues

Don't Ease Me In

Cardboard Cowboy

Standing on the Corner

Keep Rolling By

Alice D Millionaire

Me and My Uncle

1967

Morning Dew

New Potato Caboose

The Golden Road (to Unlimited Devotion)

Alligator

Turn on Your Love Light

That's It for the Other One (Suite)

Born Cross-eyed

Dark Star

1968

Clementine

China Cat Sunflower

The Eleven

And We Bid You Goodnight

Saint Stephen

Not Fade Away

Cosmic Charlie

Rosemary

1969

Dupree's Diamond Blues

Mountains of the Moon

Doin' That Rag

Dire Wolf

Casey Jones

What's Become of the Baby?

High Time

Easy Wind

Cumberland Blues

Black Peter

Uncle John's Band

Mason's Children

New Speedway Boogie

1970

Friend of the Devil

Candyman

Attics of My Life

Sugar Magnolia / Sunshine Daydream

To Lay Me Down

Brokedown Palace

Operator

Ripple

Truckin'

Till the Morning Comes

Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad

Box of Rain

1971

Bertha

Greatest Story Ever Told

Loser

Playing in the Band

Wharf Rat

BirdSong

Deal

Mister Charlie

Sugaree

Brown-eyed Women

Empty Pages

Tennessee Jed

Jack Straw

Mexicali Blues

Comes a Time

One More Saturday Night

Ramble on Rose

Chinatown Shuffle

1972

Black-Throated Wind

Looks Like Rain

The Stranger (Two Souls in Communion)

He's Gone

Stella Blue

Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleloo

1973

China Doll

Eyes of the World

Here Comes Sunshine

Loose Lucy

They Love Each Other

Row Jimmy

Weather Report Suite, Part 1

Weather Report Suite, Part 2 (Let It Grow)

Let Me Sing Your Blues Away

Peggy-O

1974

U.S. Blues

It Must Have Been the Roses

Ship of Fools

Cassidy

Scarlet Begonias

Money, Money

Pride of Cucamonga

Unbroken Chain

1975

Blues for Allah

Crazy Fingers

Help on the Way

Franklin's Tower

Showboat

The Music Never Stopped

1976

Lazy Lightnin' / Supplication

Might As Well

Samson and Delilah

The Wheel

Mission in the Rain

1977

Terrapin Station (Suite)

Estimated Prophet

Fire on the Mountain

Sunrise

Iko Iko

Passenger

Equinox

1978

I Need a Miracle

Stagger Lee

If I Had the World to Give

From the Heart of Me

Shakedown Street

France

1979

Althea

Lost Sailor

Easy to Love You

Saint of Circumstance

Alabama Getaway

1980

Far From Me

Feel Like a Stranger

1981

Never Trust a Woman

1982

Keep Your Day Job

West L.A. Fadeaway

Touch of Grey

Throwing Stones

1983

My Brother Esau

Maybe You Know

Little Star

Hell in a Bucket

1984

Don't Need Love

Tons of Steel

1985

Revolutionary Hamstrung Blues

Black Muddy River

When Push Comes to Shove

1988

Victim Or the Crime.

Foolish Heart

Blow Away

I Will Take You Home

Believe It Or Not

Gentlemen, Start Your Engines

Built to Last

1989

Standing on the Moon

We Can Run But We Can't Hide

Just a Little Light

Picasso Moon

1991

Reuben and Cèrise

1992

So Many Roads

Wave to the Wind

Corrina

Way to Go Home

1993

Eternity

Lazy River Road

Liberty

Days Between

Easy Answers

1994

Samba in the Rain

If the Shoe Fits

Childhood's End

Coda: Original Songs Played by The Dead

All That We Are

A Little Piece for You

Night of a Thousand Stars

No More Do I

Strange World

The Banyan Tree

Only the Strange Remain

October Queen

Even So

Baba Jingo

Self-defense

Time Never Ends

You Remind Me

Down the Road

Notes on the Instrumentals.

Afterword by John Barlow

The Lyricists

Bibliography

Credits and Permissions

Acknowledgments

General Index

Index of Song Titles

Index of First Lines